Avodah Mailing List

Volume 26: Number 140

Mon, 20 Jul 2009

• 1. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (T6...@aol.com)
• 2. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Arie Folger)
• 3. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Arie Folger)
• 4. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Chana Luntz)
• 5. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Arie Folger)
• 6. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Yitzhak Grossman)
• 7. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 8. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Chana Luntz)
• 9. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Arie Folger)
• 10. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 11. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Chana Luntz)
• 12. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (David Riceman)
• 13. A 9 Days Shower - The Navy to the Rescue? (rabbirichwolpoe@gmail.com)
• 14. Lo Ra'inu Eino Raya ==> Blanket Heter (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 15. Re: Tzeni'us and gender roles (Micha Berger)

Old TK: 


>if  you gave the women the option of either serving or not
> serving as  witnesses, you would not have an equitable system.  It would
>  introduce a level of arbitrariness to the legal system.... 

>Plus, maybe more important, it would remove
> from the woman  the element of protection of her dignity and tznius, 
since if
> she  /can/ testify at her own discretion, she will be pressured to do so 
in
>  many cases.
 

R' Arie Folger wrote:



>Surely this raises the question whether the theory  previously
expounded upon in this august forum is correct, namely that  tzniut
underpins just about all behavior, and that for whatever reason,  poor
men are sometimes obligated to sacrifice this behavior - a  behavior
that both genders have in common - for the sake of the greater  good. I
simply take note that you have brought tzniut squarely back on  women's
backs, as one could imagine there being equally important public  needs
for men's and women's testimony.<<
 
TK:  I never bought the notion that "tznius is the same for men and  
women."  I don't agree with RMB on this point and I don't think it's  true.  I 
believe that what would be a breach of tznius for a  woman is not necessarily a 
breach of tznius for a man -- e.g., singing in  public, at a concert or 
while leading services in  shul.   I concede that I was a little loose in my  
wording, conflating "dignity" and "tznius"  when they are overlapping  but 
not congruent categories.
 
 
RAF:



>>Furthermore, as I have demonstrated, the plain meaning  of said derash
on Devarim 22:16 is that a woman cannot/should not/may not  defend
herself against a male accuser, who accuses her of a capital  crime.

IOW, we weren't talking about subpoena (well, R'n CL was, but  the
derash isn't) but rather about the right to represent yourself in  beit
din when defending yourself. <<
TK:  I was talking about women being witnesses in court, not women  being 
defendants.  I was under the impression that women defendants /are/  allowed 
to defend themselves, and I would be very surprised if the death penalty  
could ever be carried out against a defendant who had no opportunity to defend 
 herself in court.  A woman who had committed a crime (or was credibly  
accused of a crime) would have acted in such a manner as to take herself out of 
 the category of women whose dignity must be preserved (and who therefore 
cannot  be called to testify in court).
 
 
--Toby  Katz
==========



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On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 5:12 PM, <T6...@aol.com> wrote:
> I was talking about women being witnesses in court, not women being
> defendants.? I was under the impression that women defendants /are/ allowed
> to defend themselves, and I would be very surprised if the death penalty
> could ever be carried out against a defendant who had no opportunity to
> defend herself in court.

Well, the source I quoted (by way of Rashi; it is from the Sifrei)
deals with a woman accused of adultery during her betrothal period,
which carries a potential seqila punishment, and she is quiet while
her father takes up her defense, whereupon Rashi quotes the Sifrei
that "mika'an she-ein reshut la-isha ledabber bifnei ha-ish." So, we
are talking about a defendant.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Latest blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Barukh She-Amar Elucidated
* The Anatomy of a Beracha
* Basic Building Blocks of Jewish Prayer

RMB wrote:
> She's a conceptual daughter of the woman who chose a career because being
> at home wasn't fulfilling. Okay, the work could be more frustrating,
> or the company not taxing your intellect might get to you. But this
> notion that you aren't accomplishing as much being a stay-at-home mom
> is both common in the general population (beyond the eiruv) and false.

You know, you state so confidently and so obviously that "you aren't
accomplishing as much being a stay-at-home mom is ... false." While I
am all for giving stay at home mums the respect they deserve, I am not
quite sure that we can dismiss the feeling of many women that they are
achieving a more meaningful, fulfilling life by having a career, with
some mere hand waving.
-- 
Arie Folger,
Latest blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Barukh She-Amar Elucidated
* The Anatomy of a Beracha
* Basic Building Blocks of Jewish Prayer

RAF writes:

> Well, the source I quoted (by way of Rashi; it is from the 
> Sifrei) deals with a woman accused of adultery during her 
> betrothal period, which carries a potential seqila 
> punishment, and she is quiet while her father takes up her 
> defense, whereupon Rashi quotes the Sifrei that "mika'an 
> she-ein reshut la-isha ledabber bifnei ha-ish." So, we are 
> talking about a defendant.

No we are not.  The point at which this all occurs (ie where the father
speaks, and on which Rashi comments) is where the innocence of the woman is
already a given, and the father is suing for reparations for slander - ie it
is the "civil" litigation after the criminal one has already been resolved
in the woman's favor (the physical evidence of her virginity has already
been laid before the court).  The issue now is the physical punishment for
which the husband is liable (ie malkos) and the payment which the husband
has now to make for the slander.  That is, the husband, having had his claim
proved false, is now the defendant.  BTW, the father is in fact the one
entitled by law to the slander payment, not the 12 year old girl, so in fact
he is genuinely the plaintiff who needs to sue for his rights.  As a
by-product of that monetary claim, there is also malkos.  It is not clear,
however, given that the monetary claim is not to come to her, what would be
the basis on which the girl should have standing to speak.   The only
argument for her to have standing is to ensure the malkos - but on the other
hand, since malkos is primarily a criminal penalty, it is arguably not ideal
for the victim to be suing purely to ensure the correct criminal penalty is
applied (a lot of legal systems do not allow this at all - it has to be the
state inforcing criminal penalties).  Of course, one might query why if she
is the one who was falsely accused, it is the father who is entitled to the
slander payment - but that is an issue that runs through a whole range of
these scenarios (the situation is the same vis a vis rape and seduction) -
and clearly cannot be dealt with in isolation.
 
> --
> Arie Folger,

Regards

Chana

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 11:17 PM, Chana Luntz<ch...@kolsassoon.org.uk> wrote:
> No we are not. ?The point at which this all occurs (ie where the father
> speaks, and on which Rashi comments) is where the innocence of the woman is
> already a given, and the father is suing for reparations for slander - ie it
> is the "civil" litigation after the criminal one has already been resolved
> in the woman's favor (the physical evidence of her virginity has already
> been laid before the court).

Nice try, and indeed, 22:15 could indicate that you are right, except
that 22:17, by repeating that the parents are presenting the evidence,
shows that we probably do not distinguish between the criminal and the
civil aspect of the suit. Once the girl's innocence has been proven,
he is fined, assuming all conditions for the fine are met.

Furthermore, while you would make a lot of sense, considering that a
12 year old girl may not be most apt at defending herself and standing
up to her rights in court, the Sifrei does not consider this
interpretation, stating instead that this is the prooftext wherehence
we establish that the woman should not speak up in court in front of
the man. Indeed, you recognize this when you write:

>?It is not clear,
> however, given that the monetary claim is not to come to her, what would be
> the basis on which the girl should have standing to speak.

KT,

-- 
Arie Folger,
Latest blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Barukh She-Amar Elucidated
* The Anatomy of a Beracha
* Basic Building Blocks of Jewish Prayer

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:09:21 EDT
T6...@aol.com wrote:

...

> That is exactly what my father said about women being  witnesses, that the 
> halacha protects their dignity.  He added that their  ne'emanus is not in 
> question, as a woman's word is trusted in matters of  critical  halachic 
> importance like taharas hamishpacha and kashrus.

"she'ain ha'nashim be'toras edus, she'ha'edus zarich kivun ve'yishuv
ha'da'as harbeh" (Hinuch #37).

Yitzhak
--
Bein Din Le'din - http://bdld.info - *** Note change of address ***
http://bdld.info/2009/07/19/by-any-other-url/
A discussion of Hoshen Mishpat, Even Ha'Ezer and other matters

R' Meir Shinnar wrote:
> The driving impetus behind the Young Israel movement (which
> started as the prototype participatory minyan - as distinct
> from a hazzan led shul) - was not that everyone would duchen,
> or even just that everyone would rotate davening musaf on yom
> kippur before the amud. The issue is that doing something -
> whether it is merely pticha, or an aliya, or davening before
> the amud - increases one sense of avodat hashem and of
> belonging to the minyan. The level of participation clearly
> varies - but there is some participation.

My apologies to anyonewho thinks this is off-topic, but I'm very curious:

Prior to Young Israel, was the level of participation really that low? Who
opened the aron? And who got an aliyah? Are you saying that even these
honors were restricted to some elite group even on a very ordinary Shabbos?

Akiva Miller

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I wrote:
> > No we are not. ?The point at which this all occurs (ie where the 
> > father speaks, and on which Rashi comments) is where the 
> > innocence of the woman is already a given, and the father is suing for 
> > reparations  for slander - ie it is the "civil" litigation after the 
> > criminal one  has already been resolved in the woman's favor (the 
> > physical evidence  of her virginity has already been laid before the
court).

And RAF replied:

> Nice try, and indeed, 22:15 could indicate that you are 
> right, except that 22:17, by repeating that the parents are 
> presenting the evidence, shows that we probably do not 
> distinguish between the criminal and the civil aspect of the 
> suit. Once the girl's innocence has been proven, he is fined, 
> assuming all conditions for the fine are met.

I don't quite understand how you are reading 22:17 - but the straightforward
reading is that first we have the criminal trial, which was resolved in her
favour in pasuk 22:15 by the bringing of the tokens.  Then we have the civil
trial, which commences with the father speaking in 22:16, but for which the
physical tokens also need to be produced in evidence (that is 22:17) and
then we have the civil consequences, which are the malkos and the fine.

If you are concerned about the fact that, in 22:15 it has both the father
and mother bringing the tokens, then in 22:16 it has the father only
speaking, and then in 22:17 it again uses the plural, referring to the
further bringing of the tokens - then I agree it is a question.  So see how
the Ramban resolves it:

"It says the father of the girl says and then returns and says they spread
out - ie both of them.  And the reason is because this claim [hataviah
hazot] is for the father alone [haav levado] because the fine is his [haknas
shelo] but the mother is joined in the matter because the matters of
garments of women women deal with and they are knowledgeable and experts in
blood so it is proper for the mother to take hold and bring it to beis din."

That this is in fact the correct interpretation, and the father is the
plantiff, not speaking for the defendant, as you would have it, is, oddly
enough, proved by precisely the same Sfri, which adds a further
interpretation to "vamar avi han'ara" just a few lines on - "melamed
shetoveah matchil b'devarim techila" - we learn [from here] that the
plantiff begins speaking first.  If the father is speaking on behalf of the
defendant, then this Sifri makes no sense whatsoever.

> Furthermore, while you would make a lot of sense, considering that a
> 12 year old girl may not be most apt at defending herself and 
> standing up to her rights in court, the Sifrei does not 
> consider this interpretation, stating instead that this is 
> the prooftext wherehence we establish that the woman should 
> not speak up in court in front of the man. Indeed, you 
> recognize this when you write:
> 
> >?It is not clear,
> > however, given that the monetary claim is not to come to her, what 
> >would be  the basis on which the girl should have standing to speak.

The only reason why the girl would have standing, is because of this
peculiarity of halacha, which seems to link malkos to civil litigation (this
is not the only place I have seen it, although I cannot think of where else
off the top of my head at the moment).  Ie a plantiff can sue to get the
defendant whipped.  Not allowed in common law legal systems of course, where
you have to pursuade the public prosecutor to prosecute - precisely because
it is considered that the criminal system should not be a mechanism for
victim revenge.  That possible right of the girl is excluded by the Sifri in
this particular case - where the father is the active party throughout.
Note the other limud that the Sifri takes from this part of the story "et
biti natati l'ish hazeh" - melamed shereshut l'av l'kadesh et bita katana" -
ie the father set the whole story in motion by choosing this husband to
begin with, without her consent, and it is then up to him to deal with the
subsequent litigation, again without her involvement, it is not for her to
mix in.

> KT,
> 
> --
> Arie Folger,

Regards

Chana

You have cogently answered all the questions, except why the Sifrei
has this limud that the woman (girl) isn't allowed to speak before the
man. According to the Torah Temimah, this is about the mother of the
accused girl. However, whether according to his interpretation or
yours, meaning, whether the mother or daughter is excluded, either
way, the Sifrei should not have made its statement barring the woman
(girl) from speaking before the "man" (either the husband/father, the
plaintiff turned defendant or the beit din), as that teaching implies
that we generalize from our narrative, WHILE IN OUR NARRATIVE NEITHER
OF THE WOMEN IS A PARTY to the civil proceedings, and the mother is
not even a party to the criminal proceedings.

BTW, if the concern was that a 12 year old girl cannot be expected to
properly defend herself, and so an adult steps in, why necessarily the
father? Why not the mother or an impersonal plural (which would
indicate that if the father is absent or died, beit din appoints a
to'en for her)? Probably because the Sifrei (intentionally?)
disregarded this line of reasoning.

Now, as RMS and you have aptly demonstrated, I have not brought any
biblical proof that bars a woman from making statements in court
before a "man" (see above for his possible identity). Therefore, there
very well may exist ma'hloqot between sugyot, this may be a
non-halakhic statement, either because it is aggadic, an asmakhta
reflective of their societal mores or because we follow a different
tannaitic opinion. By the way, the Ramban you cited totally ignores
that Sifrei, so that we have no idea whether or not he accepts or
rejects that Sifrei, based on any of the rationales mentioned above.

Anyway, I wasn't making any definite halakhic arguments to begin with;
I was only pointing out that there are midrashic statements that may
bar or at least make it less desirable for a woman to even defend
herself in court, when another, male party can do so.

Kol tuv,
-- 
Arie Folger,
Latest blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Barukh She-Amar Elucidated
* The Anatomy of a Beracha
* Basic Building Blocks of Jewish Prayer

Dr. Shinnar:
> I fully understand the limitations of participation - it does not mean
> that everyone gets to do everything, and the particpatory model does
> have flaws in the shuls that adopt it - that there are people who
> daven who don't know nusach, etc.

My "attack" was on the "entitlement" attitude, i.e. the hashkafa, that
it's my "right" - as opposed to simply a privilege.

I know I have swallowed a lot of Americanism myself, but Torah Judaism
is not quite as democratic or as participatory as is The USA.

I would expect most Americans to see for example - Korach as a Patrick
Henry and Moshe as a King George III.

But was Jews we have to see the Yad Hashem behind this and override some
egalitarian predelictions - at least within the confines of our Avodah!

Let's take Dr. Shinar's case ad absurdum

We have a principle of merutza lekahal. Why not have a vote (not an
auction) for each chance at the amud? Or for aliyos? We could probably
even find sources that justify it.


Q: What's the alternative?

A: AISI -
1 WTG's simply side-step this problem entirely.

2 And separate youth minyanim can help train the next generation within
formal shuls.

For example - even Breuer's - which has hazzanim during Shabbos services -
neverthless has a hashkama minyan affords others the chance to aprticipate

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

I wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:50:03AM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
> : Let us just think for a moment about what it means to be 
> either a litigant
> : or a witness in any court system...
> : The whole exercise is, has to be, one of public humilation...
> : And take what perhaps seems like a more innocuous form of 
> witnessing - eg
> : being the eidim at a wedding.  Well that is all fine and 
> good if everything
> : goes well.  But if there is a serious problem with the 
> marriage, then there
> : could well be, many years down the track, a serious push to 
> pasul you the
> : eid....

And RMB replied:

> If you make the argument that we must be holding by a 
> different definition of tzeni'us because our behavior doesn't 
> fit the literal translation, then why not here too?

That is RMS not me (although I think his point is right, if we have two
different understandings that fit halacha, and one of them we appear to be
following in practice, and one we do not, then we have to say that the olam
has poskened like the first understanding).  But my objection to your theory
goes a lot deeper than RMS's - ie that your theory as applied to general
public roles is a fundamental violation of basic principles of yiddishkeit.
Ie if we have two different understandings, and one of them will lead to
fundamental violations of halacha and haskafa, that one needs to be
rejected, whether or not they are being put into practice by the olam.  If
the olam was really putting it into practice, we might have to ask searching
questions as to whether is there a way of reconciling what the olam is doing
with halacha and haskafa, but that is already a different metzius from the
one we have here.

> It is considered a kibud to be an eid at a wedding. I assume 
> because it implies that the person is clearly one "everybody" 
> would accept eidus from. But also because we realize that few 
> people are really embarassed by being singled out for 
> positive attention.

No, I assume it is because most people do not think about what being an eid
at a wedding really means, or about the link between eidus and beis din.

But that gets into the RMS type argument.  The point I was making is that
your (or RHS's) thesis about the undesirability of public roles does indeed
work vis a vis eidus - because eidus is (with the possible exception of
eidus on the chodesh) undesirable.  In an ideal world in which humans
behaved like angels, and the world was perfect, there would never be a
reason for eidus in beis din (except perhaps, as I have said eidus on the
chodesh).  The same is not true, at least according to Yahadus, for other
public roles (some other religions indeed differ and genuinely dislike
public roles for the very reasons you have articulated). The world we look
forward and pray to be implimented has a multiplicity of public roles, but
it will, we hope, have very very little eidus in beis din.

> The seifa you are willing to use as a raayah that tzeni'us is 
> misunderstood. (Although I don't see how your later 
> definition (b) ended up differing from my take on RHS.) So 
> why not use the reisha to prove that women also shouldn't be 
> concerned about the long-shot of humiliation at a messy get case?

I am not sure what is the reisha and the seifa - but neither you nor RAF
seem to be understanding what I am saying.  What I was trying to say was
that RHS's and your thesis does make sense vis a vis eidus, and eidus *only*
(so yes, it is an argument to exclude women from being eidim, including at a
wedding).  I am not saying that is the only way to understand the gemora in
Shavuos, but it is not a difficult reading of that gemora, so long as you
substitute for the word "tznius" "kol kavuda".  The link between kol kavuda
and tzanua laleches is, to my mind, forced, but RHS is not the only one to
try and make it, as mentioned so does Getzel Ellinson.  The real link, I
suspect, is that kol kavuda is about women, and tznius is, in the popular
mind, all about women, and hence all this women's stuff tends to merge (it
is RRW's free association). 

That is, first you have to agree that the role in question is genuinely
necessary but undesirable and should be minimised wherever possible.  I
believe that we can make that argument for eidus and for being a litigant
(we don't have to, in which case your thesis falls over vis a vis these
too), but that we *can*.  I do not believe we can make that argument for
general public roles such as those taken in shul or in terms of leadership
or in the beis hamikdash or just about anywhere else.

Then, *if* we agree that the role is undesirable and should be minimised
where possible -  you need some evidence that the halachic view is to
mandate men where it is not possible to minimise the role and to protect
women from it (or allow them to protect themselves from it).  That is why
the gemora in Shavuos is important - because that is precisely what it
discusses, at least vis a vis litigants, and possibly, at least by
implication, vis a vis eidus.  If however the gemora in Shavuos had said
that the reason women don't come to beis din is because of the kavod of beis
din, or some such, then you are effectively coming out against the gemora by
providing an alternative reasoning, and that is a very problematic thing to
do - you really need alternative sources, and authoratitive ones, that
indicate they disagree with the reason given in the gemora and allow for
other reasons to be substituted.  RAF is, by his use of the Sifri,
attempting to provide alternative reasoning - ie he appears to be seeking to
demonstrate that women are not permitted to speak at all in front of beis
din (although the language of the Sifri could be taken to say that women
aren't permitted to speak at all ever in front of men - even their husbands,
ie a very extreme reading of kol isha, or in front of their husband's in
public or that a twelve year old girl who has been slandered is not
permitted to speak or a whole host of other readings).

And only then, to my mind, you look at what the am are doing, and see
whether what they are doing fits in with all of this - and if it does not,
look at whether we can provide a limud tzchus that fits in with the whole
theory, whether the limud is strong enough to allow us to say that what the
am are doing is wrong, or whether we need to go back to alternative
explanations that do fit in with the practice.  

To my mind your general thesis fails all over the place.  Vis a vis eidus
and litigation, however, it at most fails at the last hurdle, and even
there, it it is not so clear (nobody multiplies the number of eidim at a
wedding to increase the number of kibudum, a common practice by aliyos, for
example).

> :-)BBii!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana

Chana Luntz wrote:
> The only reason why the girl would have standing, is because of this
> peculiarity of halacha, which seems to link malkos to civil litigation (this
> is not the only place I have seen it, although I cannot think of where else
> off the top of my head at the moment).  Ie a plantiff can sue to get the
> defendant whipped.  Not allowed in common law legal systems of course, where
> you have to pursuade the public prosecutor to prosecute - precisely because
> it is considered that the criminal system should not be a mechanism for
> victim revenge.
You are biased by chronology; common law used to have criminal 
prosecutions initiated by private parties (not only in Colonial America 
but also in England).  See

http://law.jrank.org/pages/1863/Prosecution-History-Public-Prosecuto
r.html

and the pages following it.  He says that several (US) states retain 
this right, but doesn't enumerate them.

David Riceman

Given Bathing for pleasure is restricted before Av 9, either all 9 days
or at least shavua shehol bo...

The dilemma - how to stay "clean" w/o stepping on this restrction?

The Navy Method to the Rescue

A friend of mine served on subs and destroyers. The Navy needed to
preserve precious fresh water. He described the Navy shower as follows:

Step 1: Pull a ring and water flows to  soak one's body
Step 2: The sailor then lathers himself with soap w/o any water flowing
Step 3: The sailor pulls the ring again and rinses off all of the soap
    and dirt.
(I'm guessing that Steps 1-3 might be repeated in an extreme case)

Thus we have a shower technique that effectively cleans while minimizing
"hana'ah"

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

The BY YD 1 posits that lo ra'inu eino raya legabei women performing
shechita as opposed to the Agur...

A chaver of mine extrapolates that BY to mean, if you find no explicit
issur it must be muttar.

Q: Can anyone explain to me this line of reasoning that lo ra'inu eino
raya implies all is muttar unless explicitly forbidden?

GS
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 12:13:55AM +0100, Chana Luntz wrote:
: I am not quite sure what exactly you are getting at here.  The point has
: been reiterated by many posters that nowhere in common practice do we see
: any evidence of an understanding of tznius leading us to diminish the
: availability of public roles or indeed the creation of new ones - at least
: as it applies to men...

I'm curious about the second clause. What new rules created for men are
you thinking of?

...
: We do see a tendency to diminish public roles for women...

But that's not what we're talking about here. The innovator carries
the burden of proof that the change is an improvement in avodas H'.
Diminishing public role therefore has a different standard of
justification than creating new ones.

But until I get another

...
: Ah but it is highly relevant.  If you asked the halachic man on the
: equivalent of the clapham omnibus (ie the halachic everyman) what was the
: reason women could not get aliyos, chances are the explanation you would get
: back is because it is not tznius for men to see/hear a woman...

All of this is not my argument, and is part of the confusion of an
authoritative definition of tzeni'us that is accord with common practice
and your discussion of common definitions of tzeni'us.

I don't care of the man on the street thinks that kol ishah is a key
issue if it turns out that he's wrong. Or, that kol ishah and ervah is
a totally distinct issue that people conflate because they use the word
tzeni'us in two senses.

In order to say that common practice is evidence that we follow a
different shitah than the one RHS proposes, or of my understanding of
his proposal, someone has to actually show that another shitah exists.
This hasn't happened yet, which is why all this dialog (18 posts over
the weekend totalling nearly 78 K) fails to make an impression on me.

....
: You can only understand RHS like that if you think he is talking in a
: vacuum.  I find that completely impossible to believe. Rather I believe that
: your unifying definition is precisely his unifying definition...

He doesn't raise the question of tzeni'us in the anti-peritzus almost the
same thing as ervah sense of the word. He doesn't need to unify anything.

...
: A third is to explain kovod hatzibbur in some way - that it is insulting to
: the community if women do things that men could do.

It's insulting to the community if women do things men are obligated to
do and they aren't.  

: I am sure there are others.

: You may not like any of these, but these run far deeper in the sources than
: what is being proposed.  And while one might not like the consequences of
: these, they do not lead to the other negative consequences that would come
: about by applying your thesis generally.

They're vox popularis, and that's not how mesorah works.

: Yes, but that is not necessarily quiet worship (in many communities it can
: involve people chanting things together, and in others people screaming,
: what sounds at the top of their voice, their own individual prayer oblivious
: to the other).  Chana is a certain kind of an ideal, but it is not the only
: ideal...

???? This is quiet in a totally different sense. We were contrasting
life behind the mechitzah and a woman leading pesuqei dezmira. Not
talking about actual volume.

...
: Ie Moshe the flawed hero...

Asked and answered. It's not a flaw to sell one thing to buy something
greater.

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 10:58:56PM -0400, Meir Shinnar wrote:
: Finally, RMB raises the issues of tzeniut as a problem - arguing for a
: model of tzeniut wherein any public role is automatically a violation
: of tzeniut - and then we judge whether there is a reason for the
: violation of tzeniut.  I, as well as others (RCL far more ably and
: more scholarly, RTK (if I and RTK agree on something.....)) view this
: model of tzeniut as being a radical innovation, without any basis (and
: RMB has still not provided any basis...

I'm saying the word means what it literally translates to. As I said
above in reply to RnCL, I do not see another definition being offered
that is relevent. Dragging in tzeni'us in terms of ervah aside, we all
agree (I beliefe) that's not the whole picture -- so what's the other
piece in yours?

: traditional Jewish values - which makes further discussion difficult,
: as RMB wishes to protect a value that is not recognized as such by the
: rest of us.  However, even with the model of tzeniut that RMB raises,
: the issue becomes one of justification - violations of RMB tzeniut may
: be acceptable if there is sufficient good that comes from that.

: He argues that the changes in the workplace - have led to changes in
: kol kvuda bat melekh pnima (and I would agree)....

I did? Could have surprised me.

I would say that entering the workplace may well have pros that outweigh
the cons, particularly in the current economy, or it allows a husband to
remain in kelei qodesh, or whatever. But not that kol kevudah or penimah
is different than it was 150 years ago.

When I asked last week for a source for this alternate definition,
RnCL answered:
> the use of tznius in tzanua laleches - which is a lot closer to anavah -
> in fact this is often translated as walking humbly with one's G-d.  The
> b'tzina, the privacy part of this, is not the public action, but the
> dedication of the heart toward G-dliness, rather than towards external
> reward.

IOW, the exact gender-neutral definition I thought was the self-evident
translation of the word. It's a value lauded in pesuqim, that of not
needing to be at the front of the room.

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 11:12:17AM -0400, T6...@aol.com wrote:
: TK:  I never bought the notion that "tznius is the same for men and
: women."  I don't agree with RMB on this point and I don't think it's true.

She then goes on to discuss the ervah-type definition, and that's not
what we're talking about here. Also, I don't think tzenius even in the
sense raised here is the same for men and women. The definition may be
the same. "Hatzneiah lekhes" wasn't said only to women. But obviously
men are given more situations to seek something else. Kol kevudah bas
melekh penimah not because tzeni'us has more to do with them because
fewer mitzvos requiring that someone be the center of attention were
given to them.


Bottom line:
    Hatzneiah lekhes im E-lokekha
    Besokh ami anochi yosheves

There is a real value there, spelled out in pesuqim. Pointing to common
practice or invoking common confusion of homonymns between hatzneiah
lekhes with clothing that doesn't reveal ervah is insufficient to tell
me it isn't real.

Where do the proposed innovations (even ones permitted by not being qol
ishah, davar shebiqdushah, tefillah betzibur, or some other problem of
requiring a mechuyav lehotzi miydei chovaso) acknowledge this value?
Or are you saying there is something being bought in exchange that is of
greater value? And if so, what?

I really have little to add unless new ground is covered on this
particular question.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
mi...@aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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